Top 6 Questions to Ask Yourself About Online Recipes
September 28, 2007 1:43 pm Our Software, Recipes, Family Cookbook Ideas, BlogrollI’m not a big fan of hosting my personal family recipes on a website. There are a number of pitfalls in putting hundreds of hours into maintaining an online recipe book:
1. Will they be around?
What happens if the website service goes bankrupt? Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but maybe next year.
2. What do you do if the recipes vanish?
Is there a backup? I’ve heard several stories of people entering all their recipes online and they just vanish. *poof*
3. What if they become obnoxious?
It may be free now, but what about three years from now? Five? Ten? What if they suddenly start flooding you with advertisements? If you build up a huge collection of recipes online, it’ll be really hard to just walk away.
4. How likely is it that you’ll share your family recipes with your grand daughter if it’s a bookmark on some web page?
Sitting in front of a computer, even online, is an inherently isolating event. Handing somebody a printed cookbook is inherently social.
Imagine you just died. (I know it’s horrible, but play along.) Are your descendants likely to stumble into your family recipes at website XYZ under the user name GrannyCookMachine537?
5. Are you comfortable with not having control over how your family recipes will be used?
If you carefully read the license agreements to these online recipe websites, you’ll notice that even though you own the recipes, they have publishing rights. They can make their own recipe book using your recipes and not pay you a dime. Melissa A. Trainer writes about this issue here.
6. Who wants to look up a recipe on a computer when your hands are covered in butter and eggs?
I’ll start making the pot roast as soon as my computer boots up. And my internet access starts. And I log on to the website. And I do a search for the recipe I want. And I do the search again because I typed it wrong. And–oh heck, let’s just order a pizza.
As Napoleon Dynamite’s brother said, “Yes, I love technology.” But not so much that I don’t see the value of a good ol’ fashioned printed cookbook. Obviously, as the owner of a cookbook printing software company, I’m pretty biased. But I could’ve just as easily started an online recipe storage website like all the others. I didn’t.
That’s because I believe the best way to manage your family recipes is from your own computer. Off line and in control.
For more about my cookbook printing software, click here.
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September 29th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Awesome Post. My compliments to the author.
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December 10th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Can you import recipes from microsoft word?
December 25th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
can this cookbook backup my
recipes that I inter in the book
December 25th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
can this cookbook backup my recipes that I inter in the book
Hi Joe-
Yes, if you mean “do my recipes get saved on my computer.” You can also back up your recipes onto an extra hard drive or cd rom if you want to. Just copy the file located at C:\Program Files\Matilda\MatildaBack.mdb to wherever you want to back up your recipes.
Matilda
January 10th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
I have bookmarked your website because I have taken on the job of writing our family cookbook. I know that currently there is not the option of having just one recipe per page, but one of your answers indicates that this may be an option with the updated version. Can you please contact me when the udate is available for purchase? If not, I understand. Thanks, Kathy
April 11th, 2008 at 8:50 am
When will the upgraded/updated version of Matilda’s cook book software be available? I am hoping for the “one recipe per page” option.
Thanks.
April 15th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Hi, Debbie-
One recipe per page will be an option. However, it’s looking like mid-summer at the earliest. The good news is that the upgrade will be less than $15 to download.
Matilda
April 20th, 2008 at 4:53 am
is there a way to arrange recipes so the entire recipe fits onto one page–meaning it does not end on one page to be continued by turning the page to get the rest of the recipe?
April 21st, 2008 at 11:35 am
Hi, Carole-
You can decrease the font size to squeeze it all in. Otherwise, there’s just not much we can do to cram more in.
Matilda
May 7th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I love all the changes that you have made to your software. It was well worth the wait. Good Job! I will linking your site on mine since you now do what I think was missing in cookbook creation. A tool that allows everything to stay on your own computer and the formats that so many people crave. My cd it the perfect compliment for asking for recipes, stories and photo and then having charts to to stay organized. We are not competitors but together give people everything they need to do a great cookbook. I am so excited to recommend your product now!!!
June 1st, 2008 at 11:15 am
I notice one of the questions was about changing the margins and you said it could be done. My question is, “How?” I don’t see an edit feature or file feature (as in WORD) in this program. I’d appreciate any help you can give me on this.
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:54 am
Hi, Nancy-
Sorry, I should’ve clarified. It depends on your printer, but most printers have the ability to change margin settings.
Hit the Printer icon, then in your printer’s dialog box it probably says something about setting margins.
If your printer doesn’t support custom margins, then you won’t be able to do it though.
Matilda
June 26th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Can you readily change the photo templates with cut and paste or drag functions from Windows?
Can you bold, italize or change font when within a given template/style?